Why Today Was a Good Day for Mitt Romney

A Ray of Hope

Why today was a good day for Mitt Romney.

Every day until the election, Slate will offer up one reason to be optimistic for your candidate.

11 days to go:

Today’s Good News For Romney: Obama needs at least 38 percent of the white vote to win re-election. Right now, he doesn’t have it. That’s a huge problem for the president, who must now rely on massive minority turnout to win 270 electoral votes. Democratic presidential candidates in the modern era have never been popular among white voters—Obama only earned 41 percent of their votes in 2008—but this year marks a startling low unmatched since Walter Mondale’s landslide defeat. The disparity is particularly acute among white men, only 32 percent of whom support Obama. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney has locked down the support of at least 60 percent of white voters and 65 percent of white men, meaning Obama has only 2 to 3 percent of undecided white voters left to woo.